Montane is probably my favourite kit manufacturer – very well designed IMO, especially their mountaineering / climbing gear. The featherlite smock is a great bit of kit that gets used all the time – weighs nothing, makes a great outer shell with just a base layer if very active or add over multiple layers if moving slower and not raining.

I’ve got some size 42 approach shoes for sale if anyone is interested? £35 posted. They’re unused, just a bit big for me. Berg Serval – got them off Sports Pursuit. Don’t know much about the brand, but look decent & have a ‘climbing zone’ on the toe so good for scrambling/standing on thin edges. Vibram sole.

http://img34.staticclassifieds.com/images_tablicapl/291035491_3_644x461_buty-berg-meskie-43-buty_rev001.jpg

http://img34.staticclassifieds.com/images_tablicapl/291035491_4_644x461_buty-berg-meskie-43-moda_rev001.jpg

Strange thread. What exactly is the perceived risk?

but it’s still not technically yours though, until the end of the hire period

Aside from the occasional friendly email from cyclescheme, its pretty much my bike.

@nealglover:

Its not though, is it. We’re looking at the difference between annual salary with or without the bike deductions. The difference for me appears to be ~£700.

I presume you’re deliberately ignoring the payments coming out of untaxed salary and peachos being interested in how much it’s costing him in taxed salary.
Well not really no.

The question was “how much has it cost me”

That’s just a case of adding up all the payments that have been made. As I said.

If the question had been “how much Income Tax and NI have I saved myself from paying” then that would be a different answer obviously. But that wasn’t the question.

But still not that complicated. Just add up all the payments you have made, and use an online PAYE calculator to work out the Tax and NI that would have been due on that amount.

Yeah, thanks for the pedants – it was pretty obvious what answer I was trying to get!

Looked at http://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/compare.php and entered my details then compared the with/without bike deductions. Couldn’t get the figures quite perfect, but there or there about. Looks like the bike has cost me around £700 over the course of a year.

Plus the £85 extended hire works out at around 70% of full value. Not bad (if my calcs are right!)

I’ve just arrived at the end of my term, so in same boat as OP. I was aware of the final payment to hire for an extra 3 years though, but as someone else mentioned – I’m in the process of ignoring it…see what happens!

One thing though – I’m really struggling to work out the actual cost of the bike. The full value including accessories was £1150. My pre-tax repayments have been £95 over the course of the year and they want £85 off me for the extended hire period.

I get that the savings are incurred through reduced NI & PAYE contributions, but for me these differ each month due to other pre-tax stuff such as holiday purchase schemes, expenses etc.

So is there a simple way I can figure out exactly how much I have paid for the thing?

Campervanning round the Highlands. Just me & the Mrs. Was perfect! Inverness on Xmas eve, Golspie to oursleves on Xmas day, lots of time in the evenings playing games & drinking whiskey together (dark at 4pm!), lots of sightseeing (waterfalls, whaling stations, ancient ruins) and hillwalking. Barely saw anyone. Only major downside was the lack of open pubs!

Am I the only person who like wet and slick trails as much as dry and dusty?

Nah, I love it. Wet, steep, off camber, rooty trails in particular!

Last week was ace! Managed to cram 4 rides into 7 days and Thursday night was the first proper night ride of the season. Awesome skies above Tod :D

Some good stuff on here:

https://www.strava.com/activities/268630988

Good find, I need some spares.

How long are the valve stems?

Last time I bought some cheap tubes from On-One (26″ DH) the stems were ridiculously short, which is basically a massive pain in the arse!

Beijing. Rather cruel, but rather tasty.

Stand out performance was the woman that completed it on a Trek hardtail with 80mm travel forks…..

Watching the women come through on the Saturday, one of them shouted that she’d broken her collarbone on the glacier. This was on the brow before dropping into Oz and with no sign of stopping her run. Nails!

cheers mate!

great week – defo recommended.

I got a podium[/url]!!

…albeit in the Megavalanche Amateurs. 4th overall, 3rd in the Masters cat with a time of 58:33.

After a great start from the 4th row in my quali I was gunning for a top ten finish – aiming to get into the main race with the pros. Rolled my (tubeless) tyre off the rim at the bottom of the grassy zig zags and ended up finishing around 76th, which stuck me on the front row of the 3rd race, so not an entirely bad place to be.

Not a bad start in the main race either; even with 5 stacks on the snow I was in 2nd place – one of which I lost after another crash on the traverse and another place on the slog over the brow.

Wanted to get down in under an hour in whichever race I ended up racing in, so happy days. Would’ve liked to have ridden in the main race, but can’t really complain at coming home with a big ass Megavalanche medal!

I’d go against the grain as well and say that off-the-shelf isn’t necessarily better VFM than a DIY job. When I first built my Mega a few years back it totalled around £1800 whereas a similar specced full build was more than £2500. Having the opportunity to shop around for bargains and use components from the likes of Superstar & Uberbike can deal you some great savings. Also, brand new second hand – you’ll be surprised how much decent quality kit is sold on when folk buy off-the-shelf and swap parts to suit their preferences.

Axa assistance. Can’t fault em at all. A couple of years back they recovered us off the side of a French mway in the early hours to a local town, dropped at a garage for diagnosis, sorted a hire car so we could finish our journey when they realised it wasn’t gonna be fixed quickly kept hire car for the duration of trip, flew 4 of us plus bikes back to uk from Geneva, paid for taxis home from airport, repatriated car back to uk (for a small fee (£200) only coz it wasn’t really worth that much).

Reckon they spent at least £3k before repatriation.

I’d paid them £11 by this time (first month’s installment). Could’ve cancelled, but actually wanted to keep the cover for the rest of the year after all that!

edit: I think they provide services to a lot of companies such as Kwikfit, so worth checking that out!

Also, if you buy an empty box does it come in a bigger box?

Are you saying there’s a market for oversized reverb boxes so that sellers of reverb boxes can sell their reverb boxes boxed?

hmmmmm

have you still got the deore triple?? if so, it’ll work, but the chain will buzz!

Love mine. No issues with the seatpost. Have changed the following from the stock build:

1×10 (avec 42 extender) so that I can go chubby (and be trendy)
krampus tyres
deore brakes
45mm stem and normal bars (though have kept the old setup for bikepacking)

Found that it is a perfect compliment to my other bikes (2012 Mega and Supreme DH V3) in that I have something suitable for all types of riding with minimal crossover. The Longitude does local loops and big days out in the Dales (e.g.) perfectly. It’s obviously slower on more technical terrain than the Mega and it really bloody hurts when it gets rough – but that’s all part of the fun, isn’t it?! Haven’t found anything so far that I just couldn’t get down.

Normal bars and a short stem made a massive difference to me, just felt more ‘right’. But I suppose they were specced with the swoopy bars for an entirely different reason than how I use my bike the majority of the time.

Have you got Spyke brakes? I found them ok, but decided to sell based on the fact that I could sell them 2nd hand for more than a new set of Deores are worth. Preferred to have the performance of hydraulics over the (apparent) reliability of cables. (p.s. stock tektro pads (the red ones) lasted all of 2 rides for me).

Still not been out on an overnight adventure yet, but I will be doing so asap.

One of my mates suffered one on the side of Cairngorm last September – very scary moment as we didn’t have a clue what was going on (suspected heart attack). Got him rescued (massive thanks to MR) and shipped off to Inverness where he spent a couple of days zipping around the corridors in his wheelchair (back to his normal self almost immediately). He was off the bike for a while, but is back on it now, though he has been in for further treatment a few times back in Manchester. Like you, he was pretty fit.

I’ll try and get him to come on here and have a chat.

The RT3 was high volume I think (whatever was sold with the frames) – RP23 is standard.

MK1 Mega here. I swapped my RT3 for an RP23 ages ago – made the bike feel loads better to me – much more lively.

As above – your local chinese supermarket will have loads of instant noodle varieties that are much better than pot noodles. Also if you go to a world foods supermarket (e.g. Worldwide Foods) you can buy tinned curries that are decent – saag paneer, chickpeas etc all good and quick!

Simond Alpine Thermal – £50. Very warm! Doesn’t have a fancy name for the filling or shell though.

http://www.simond.com/en/cat/Alpinism_clothing/prd/Veste_chaude_Alpinism_Man

25 mm B-screw

got mine from the States though…

Revs have the best DH tracks on these shores. Fact.

As much as I used to be into all these tunes and have wondered around off my face to plenty of them, they all sound pretty bad these days. Most really haven’t stood the test of time.

Whereas most of these guys’ stuff is still goes:

block them in so that when they finish they have to come find you

Old Man of Coniston. Footpath off the front down to Low Water and then through the slate quarries is one of the best!

…this, and cafe arrangements, is why we don’t do roadie stuff

http://www.randomgnar.com/

GoPro Cineform/Studio? I’ve never used it, but it is free…

Yeah its only the BDS track mate – you wouldn’t wanna ride that anyway…unless you like hugging trees!

Great grass roots venue – well worth a visit!

just googled llangollen, maybe not

Llangollen…is a no access private race on super technical DH Venue

just worth saying they are making sure nobody rides Llangollen outside of races as it’s private land.

Not true – they’re open for business! They have a number of tracks, a couple of which are relatively tame, and are loads of fun on a trail bike. A couple more which are steeper and more technical and then the NPS/BDS track, which you’ll have seen the videos (and also where that unfortunate incident happened). This track is not open outside race weekends, so this is where confusion about no access stems from.

Definitely worth a visit – it’s a great venue and very different to Antur Stiniog.

It is a Full Face only venue, like all uplift centres…

Give Martin a shout if you fancy it: http://onegiantleapllangollen.co.uk/

I imagine that within 1/2 hour I’d be using them fine; just need to re-program your fingers

Exactly!

I’d say they’re exactly what your Mrs is after

Don’t tell him what his Mrs wants!!!

Re Sex Tape – the thing that most surprised me was that its a Sony film which basically goes on to us the iPad as the most interesting character in the plot!

But thanks for the irrelevant input anyway.

Anytime, though I think you might find my comment had a lot a relevance to the conversation, so I’ll take your response as just:

thanks for the input

Do her fingers not work properly or something?

Saying that such and such brake is either on or off is a complete load of tosh to be honest with you. One of the genius ways our body works is the ability to gently squeeze something or give it a good hard grab. Shimano brakes aren’t on or off – no brakes are – they just perhaps take less effort to get a really decent stop on, which doesn’t mean that you can’t lightly feather them, but does help you go faster and reduces arm pump etc.